After our last council meeting, I let you all know, in the following Tidings, that we would potentially resume an “in-person” worship, when the website, www.covidactnow.org, designated Rockingham County “orange.” Late last week, this occurred. Through email conversation, council has determined that we are safe to offer the opportunity for people to worship “in-person.” Here are the details.

Worship will be 8:30am service
Strict safety protocols enforced
Wear masks, no congregational signing, physically distanced, no Fellowship afterwards
Please sign-up using the “Sign-up Genius” link
In order to make this happen, we will need volunteers for “Greeters,” “Counters,” and “Cleaners.”

This will obviously raise some questions around Holy Week and our Easter schedule. We are still working on putting this together. Hopefully, if we continue to move in the right direction, we will be offering some type of in-person worship. But, because there is still so much unknown, we can’t offer specifics at this time. What I can say is, plan for, at least, an outdoor gathering (possible sunrise?), an indoor gathering (assuming numbers stay in the right direction) and either a pre-recorded worship or a zoom worship (TBD).

It is unbelievable that we are approaching 1 year of not being in the sanctuary, except for 3 Sundays in October. When this all started, council made the decision to suspend indoor worship for 2 weeks! No one thought we would still be doing this. Yet, through it all, we have faithfully gathered each week, even if it hasn’t been in our building. We have still done baptisms. We have still done weddings. We have still done funerals. We have still received communion. We have kept the faith and worshipped together.

Thank you all for the ways in which you stuck with it and are sticking with it. It hasn’t been easy. We are not done. But a new day is coming. That is the promise of Easter that we are moving towards.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Tim